Augmented Reality is for Seeing Better

The fundamental capability that current eye glasses provide is to see better. They help near sighted people see far away things. They help older eyes see things that are close. Ground troops sometimes wear a different kind glasses, night vision goggles, that help them see better in the dark. Fighter jet pilots wear augmented helmets because they help them see better information about their aircraft and their combat situation.

I've been playing with a Hololens at home, testing its capabilities and figuring out all of the decisions that Microsoft designers made on top of the technology. I've now placed a few dozen virtual pieces of decoration and information (they call them holograms sigh) in the nooks and crannies of the main floor of my home. It's really fun to place them and think about how they interact. It was fun to see my partner and kid discover each one. When I'm not wearing the glasses, I wonder what's happening with the virtual stuff. I see the house different, now.

Is it "seeing better" enough to wear a clunky Hololens most of the time? No way. If it was not clunky? Totally.

I've re-purposed my social media streams, muting or unsubscribing from people who post anything except art and the occasional interesting or funny idea. It's lovely to show up on Twitter and Instagram to see another batch of art. I'm looking forward to following someone on Twitter and choosing to add their geo-pinned posts to a layer that I see when wearing AR glasses. I can only barely imagine what it will be like to see the accumulated art of my entire stream of artists laid across a city.

So, that's decoration and art. With a little daydreaming, I'm sure that you can think of ways to see better with other types of information. Architecture, safety, infrared, food reviews, dramatic reenactments... They just keep coming.

What the big tech companies are shipping as augmented reality is just a sign that they're dipping their toes into the water. The tech isn't ready. The designs certainly aren't ready. But, they're important first steps into mass market AR and they'll get us ready for when we're smart enough to ship glasses that aren't clunky. For when we're smart enough to see better.

Hitchcock was awake. Starlight filtered through the forest canopy and dappled the walls of the cabin he shared with Lester. A trio of Clytemnestra’s beetle bots was resting in Lester's sleep-crumpled dreads, occasionally flicking their wings in response to dreams. Sometimes he forgot ...

Clytemnestra was in fragments. Her programs were spread across her stolen space ship, the station she just stole it from, and the small bots that she used to steal it. As each program relayed its experiences to the other, an avalanche of memory effects like ...

Lester was obsessed. It had been a year since the massive beam of light printed the white sphere that invited humanity to a distant star, and he still spent most of his time inspecting the sensor logs in his office. Pictures of the beam and ...

Elizabeth Stinton was frustrated. Her simulations for turbulence in her theoretical air sinter were a mess and if she didn't have something to show at the next board meeting she was pretty certain that they'd sell her startup for parts.

The pounding in my head is in sync with the ticking of the escalator steps as they rise from the netherworld of the convention center's floor. I pull a smile from memory and ignore the sweat in my eyebrows. So many happy attendees, clipping ...

Last weekend I had coffee at the wonderful Uptown Espresso with a friend from a nearby Amazon office. I write "a" nearby office because he's working on a multi-year project so secret that he can't even tell people which building he's in ...

I am a software engineering newbie. I thought that I knew a lot about it after I coded my first BASIC program on a TRS-100 way back in the before time, but now I see that the creation of software is a vast landscape of ...